


to the radiant southern sun

by Wordsintothevoid



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome Susan Pevensie, Christianity, Crisis of Faith, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, POV Susan Pevensie, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Queer Character, Queer Themes, Suicidal Thoughts, Susan Pevensie Deserved Better, Susan Pevensie-centric, The Problem of Susan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27064867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wordsintothevoid/pseuds/Wordsintothevoid
Summary: After the railway accident, Susan is left to mourn her family, haunted by the faded memories of a land she misses without knowing why. An exploration of love, grief, and finding faith again."Perhaps she will get to Aslan's country in the end... in her own way." -C. S. Lewis
Comments: 15
Kudos: 30





	1. the train

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited to begin this fic journey! I've been wanting to write this for a VERY long time (ever since I finished The Last Battle at age 12) and I truly hope that I can do Susan and Narnia justice. Faith is a complex, messy, non-linear journey and I hope to capture that and parallel my own struggles and grief while being as canon-compliant as possible.
> 
> Content warnings will be posted before each chapter if applicable and I'll update the tag if necessary. For this chapter, content warning for descriptions of the Pevensie siblings after the train accident (not terribly graphic, but blood and broken bones are described) and very brief thoughts of self-harm.

_ To the radiant southern sun, Queen Susan the Gentle. _

“Recent railroad tragedy in London has claimed the lives of at least thirty victims. Rescuers are still searching for survivors with no success so far. We’re providing updates every hour, on the hour. Attempts to reach the victims’ families have been—”

She switches the radio off. Pours another cup of tea.  _ Dad, Mum, Peter, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace, Jill, the Professor…  _ The names repeat in an endless scroll.

She calls her work and gets the week off. They threaten to fire her. She hangs up on them. 

She spends twenty minutes on the phone with Peter’s girlfriend, unable to even form words as the girl on the other end of the line sobs. Her tea gets cold.

Someone calls her, warning to know about funeral arrangements. “Miss Pevensie, you have our deepest sympathies but we were wondering…”

She can’t even listen, telling him she’ll call back later. She sits at her kitchen table, head on her arms, struggling for air. And then she can’t take it anymore.

She sweeps her mug, her papers, her books to the floor, cold tea soaking everything. The mug shatters, of course. Lies there looking wounded and betrayed. She breaks a few more cups, rummaging through her cupboard and smashing them to the ground.

Keeps thinking about Lucy’s eighteenth birthday in a month and the present that’s safely wrapped in her closet. Thinks about Ed’s face on V-E Day and how he bought them all ice cream from his own savings. Thinks about her mother’s soft hands and smell of lavender.

She leaves the wet papers and shattered ceramic on the floor. Calls the funeral director. Gives one word answers, hoping that they won’t mind her decisions (why didn’t they ever talk about this kind of stuff? But she knows why. No one expected her to be the last Pevensie.)

The executor of her parents’ will comes to the flat, introduces himself as Mr. Wilson. He seems to be a kind man, one who doesn’t deserve to be here on a Monday afternoon explaining to her the demise of her whole family. He tells her their parents’ will dictates the estate be split between the four siblings equally. He rubs the back of his neck at that. “So, you see, Miss Pevensie, it all goes to you.”

She’ll have enough to live on comfortably. She’ll probably still have to work some, but it’s a fair chunk of money. That means nothing to her right now.

He shuffles his feet again and she stands and offers him a cup of tea, pouring it into one of the few unbroken cups. “Miss Pevensie, I’m so sorry to ask this of you, but the authorities would like you to identify the bodies.”

He somehow manages to catch her and the teapot before she sways to the floor. “Miss Pevensie? Miss?”

He looks panicked and she realizes she’s gasping over and over again, “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

“I’m sorry for suggesting it, Miss. Sit down, it’s okay, no one will force you.” He guides her to the sofa and she tries to pull herself back into her body, feel human again.

He waits until she’s calm, this total stranger surprisingly compassionate. “I’ll tell the police you decline and handle the transfer of the assets to your accounts.”

She nods and he stands and dons his hat. “You have my deepest sympathies, Miss Pevensie.”

And then he lets himself out.

She quietly pours the rest of the tea down the sink. Washes the tea set and leaves it to dry on the drainboard, stepping around the mess she made earlier. 

She crawls into bed, still in her day dress. Pulls the covers over her face and breathes quietly in the warm darkness. No tears. Not yet, anyway.

Her heart feels like gray numbness with occasional jabs of agony. This must be a bad dream, she thinks. I’ll wake up tomorrow and Eustace will ring me about an insect he found and Lucy will need my help shopping for a birthday dress.

The hours drag on.

She’s riding the train, the world rushing past, telegraph wires swooping between poles as the train chugs through the countryside. The soft hum of conversation fills the train compartment. She’s content, flicking through a magazine, crossing and uncrossing her legs at the ankle.

In their booth, Peter is poking Lucy in the ribs; she sticks her tongue out at him. Edmund just laughs at them both as he pages through his textbook.

She stands for a quick walk up and down the compartment to stretch her legs. A sweet old woman compliments her hat and she smiles and thanks her.

The slowing of the train makes her pause. They must be approaching the station. She’s walking back to her seat, thinking about meeting their parents at the stop, looking forward to seeing them again, and then the world seems to move in slow motion.

A horrible crash of screeching metal, a sudden jolt forward, terrified screams. She lurches, desperately tries to grab something to save herself. But her fingers slide off anything solid. Her head collides with something sharp and the world goes black.

She awakens slowly, something sticky trickling down her cheek. The smell of smoke burns her nose, fire crackling hungrily. Panic rises, sour, pressing against her throat.

She drags herself to her feet, and there’s people moaning, whimpering, screaming. Picking her way through broken seats, she thinks she _ must  _ find them _. If she can find them, everything will be okay _ . Everything will be okay and they’ll hug each other and then go find their parents.

She finds the wreckage of their booth, broken glass from the ruined window crunching under her shoes.

Golden, bright Peter is sprawled across the seat, blond hair coated in blood, eyes empty and staring. 

Edmund, sweet, serious Edmund, is on the floor, facedown, limbs at bent angles, blood staining his cream sweater. 

And Lucy. Lucy, her baby sister, is  _ mangled _ , hands twisted, face lacerated, pieces of broken glass embedded in her skin.

She stands there and a scream rises from her, louder and louder and louder. It’s going to tear her throat apart, tear apart the whole world. She stands, surrounded by flames and the ruin of her family, until she’s nothing but an empty, echoing scream.

She wakes in thick darkness, throat raw and aching. She clutches her chest, trying to get her lungs to  _ breathe _ , let go of this ceaseless, battering panic. 

Grief drowns her, smashes her against rocks of regret. She misses them and that sounds so empty and trite but she misses them so deeply it feels like she’s lost a limb.

The scene from her nightmare flickers before her closed eyes like a god tormenting a plaything. Is that what they looked like, she wonders with a ragged breath? The people who pulled them from the train, did they have to see her siblings looking like broken, bloody dolls?

Edmund was studying to be a doctor, to  _ fix  _ people. Always ready to crack a joke or fold someone into a hug, with his hands that never stopped moving. He was going to save the world with his quick smile and his brilliant mind.

Peter, whose laugh rang through the house like music that never stops, who seemed to glow so brightly that women stared as he walked by. When they were children, they called him “King Peter” and though she can’t remember why, the nickname stuck. Peter, who walked like a hero and smiled like the sun.

And Lucy, sweet Lucy, had a heart full of so much love that she’d save fallen baby birds, carry candy in her purse for crying children, smile at the lonely people on the Tube. She remembers when Lucy was born, their mother placing the tiny, soft bundle into her arms. She had looked down at the sleepy baby girl and vowed to protect her.

She doubles over, twisted in her sheets, pressing her fist against her mouth trying to keep her agony from spilling out. She is twenty-one years old and she will never see them again.

The decades seem to stretch before her, empty and stark. They’ll never go to each other’s weddings; she’ll never be an aunt to their children. She can never ring Lucy just for fun to get lunch together. She’ll never tease Peter about his new girl or find little notes in her books from Ed.

She’ll have to grow old without them, without everyone. She doesn’t know how she can bear it.

The morning dawns early, bright and fresh and beautiful. It rained during the night and the ground smells like spring, dewdrops pebbling on every leaf like cups of fairy wine.

She hates it.

She sweeps up the mess in her kitchen, dresses in a clean house dress, swipes on a coat of lipstick. Stares in the mirror until she doesn’t recognize herself anymore, nothing but pale, dead eyes and a wide, blood-red mouth.

She picks up a book. Sets it back down. Reorganizes all her books by title on her shelves and then by color. Washes the kitchen floor on her hands and knees, scrubbing the black and white tiles until her hands are raw from the cleanser.

Washes in every window in the house, inside and out. Tries not to feel the sun warming her hair as she stands outside.  _ No _ , she thinks viciously.  _ You don’t get to be happy right now. You can’t fix this. _

She realizes the absurdity of cursing the sun and blinks suddenly, snapping back to herself. Her hands are sudsy up to the elbows and the window gleams in the early morning light. Her small house looks friendly and warm, eager to be clean and comfortable.

She fights the urge to smash a window pane with her fist, dig her nails into her skin, shriek like a madwoman, and sinks to her knees in the wet grass.

“Make it stop,” she moans. “Please. It’s too hard. I can’t do it. You can’t ask this of me.” The tears drip down her cheeks as she presses her hands into the dirt.

A soft breeze lifts her hair, warming her cold skin.  _ Dearest,  _ the wind seems to sigh. And somehow, for just a moment, her grief feels a tiny bit lighter. She wraps her arms around herself, just breathing. In. Out. Inhale. Exhale.

“Funny, really,” Ed’s saying. “People stop breathing in a crisis. Decreased oxygen hinders cognitive function.” He’d looked up roguishly from his textbook. “Be sure you don’t suffocate, Su, the next time Mum won’t let you go out with your friends.”

In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

She stands slowly. Tries to brush the dampness from her skirt, wipe the earth stains from her hands. She holds the memory of Edmund’s voice close to her heart, replaying the moment again and again. The warm breeze swirls around her again and she takes a deep breath and goes back into the house.


	2. the aftermath

It’s difficult to keep breathing. She has to force the air into her lungs sometimes, at night when her house is so quiet and there’s something terrible lurking in all the silence. It sounds like their laughter, like the crash of broken glass, like silence that only exists because there is no one who can make noise.

She attends the funeral. Remembers nothing of it. She gets home and realizes the day was nothing but a blur. No faces stand in her memory, no feelings. She’s savagely grateful.

She buys sleeping pills in a cheap drugstore, tries to ignore the eyes that linger on her uncurled hair and mouth bare of lipstick. The pills are the only thing that can pull her down into the nothingness. Otherwise, she floats six inches below the surface, deep enough to drown, not deep enough to sink to the bottom.

Somehow, she manages to keep the house clean. She does dishes while standing at the sink, wondering. Are these really her hands? Her plates? Can this really be her, doing dishes while the bodies of her family rot in the ground? Nothing feels  _ real  _ anymore.

The world is props on a stage, her body a puppet controlled by a god who jerks her around, leaves her lying in a heap when she’s no longer convenient.

She goes back to work. She’s a secretary at a law firm, hired because she’s good at being invisible and making coffee and typing papers until her wrists are sore. At work, she’s even more blank-eyed than usual, and some people give her pitying looks.  _ Look at the girl who lost everyone. Isn’t she just a walking tragedy? _

She walks faster, doesn’t spill coffee, makes sure there are no typos, nods when people ask her questions and ignores them when they say meaningless noise about her family and their condolences.

She used to ride the Tube home and now she walks, not caring that it takes her an extra thirty minutes, not caring that she’s already getting a blister on her little toe from her heels that rub in all the wrong places.

Last year for her birthday, Peter gave her a typewriter. She had squealed and threw her arms around him and he had just muttered something about working extra shifts and it was secondhand anyway and it wasn’t really  _ that _ good of a present.

It’s still sitting on her desk. She hasn’t used it since the day she got the phone call.

Also on her desk sits the latest story she was writing, pages stacked neatly in a pile. It’s a stupid little story, really: all about a magical land full of dryads, fauns, talking animals, and the like. It’s all based on the silly games they used to playwhen they were small, King Peter and Queen Susan and all the rest.

She highly doubts any publisher would want it, but her imagination as a child was vivid and the images in her mind wouldn’t leave her unless she wrote them down, growing stronger and clearer as she typed. 

A lantern in a forest, a castle by the sea, fierce battles and a horn pressed to her lips, a bowstring quivering in her fingers. A crown on her head, people kneeling to her as she sits on a throne beaming, a woman dressed all in white with the coldest smile she’d ever seen carrying a wand. Something  _ ached  _ in her as she wrote, describing every single detail she could imagine. It was something lost for good, a home that she can never return to.

Sometimes she wept as she wrote and a few of the pages have shameful tear drops blurring a few lines. Those pages had to be retyped and she had forced down the strange emotion, commanding her lip not to tremble.

It’s ridiculous, really. Completely fanciful and impractical. She ought to burn those pages. No one besides herself and her siblings would ever want to read them and she very deliberately never told her siblings.

She knows they’d have cooed over it with delight, would have loved to have her pulled back into their nonsense, saying that all those games of make-believe were  _ real.  _ But she never could.

She was the  _ responsible  _ one, the one who held everyone together and made sure that Peter and Ed didn’t fight too much, made sure that Lucy didn’t wake up with nightmares, made sure that Mum didn’t worry too much. Keeping her family together is— _ was _ exhausting and a woman who still pretends that she’s a  _ queen _ of a made up country at twenty-one is acting like a child. 

When she does dishes, types, dresses even, there’s a twinge of agony in her upper right shoulder, the persistent plea of a muscle that’s stretched far too often, far too far. She wonders blindly if grief is a physical weight. If it is, then standing is an exercise in torture, walking and breathing beyond the pale.

Sometimes she’ll open the windows just to see if the fresh air feels better or worse. It’s both, of course. Always both. Just like when she found one of Lucy’s sweaters in her hamper when she did the wash and her pain and joy clogged her lungs in equal measure.

Days go by. She keeps washing the dishes, keeps doing the wash, keeps sweeping the kitchen floor, keeps scrubbing at the ring in the bathtub. It feels like the only thing she can do when there’s a gaping hole in her chest and it’s difficult to believe that no one else can see it. It’s strange how repetitive her days became. Work, clean the house, stare at the walls, repeat and repeat and repeat.

She has dreams of the land from her story. More images flood her mind as she tosses, getting tangled in her sweaty sheets. 

Council meetings with pompous councilors while she sneaks glances at Lucy as she tries to not laugh. The wind tossing her hair as she races on horseback through an autumn forest, knowing her siblings are just ahead of her, and she bends lower over her horse’s mane, giving a wild yell of joy. A young man bending low over her outstretched hand, a crown glinting in his dark hair.

She wakes up gasping. The images feel more like memories, so clear and vivid that she feels like she  _ lived  _ them rather than imagined them. The pain makes her clench her fists, nails digging into her palms. Her imagination as a child was impressive, she supposes, and she doesn’t know if she’s longing more for their make-believe world or for the family she shared it with. The agony all blends together.

Again and again, she’s struck by the feeling of injustice. How is it fair that her family gets to live a charmed live, secure in their silly games and their pretty nonsense world, and then a quick death, never needing to miss each other? 

She is the one who is forced to be practical, to wear lipstick and stockings and curl her hair and go to parties because that is the way the world works and if you’re going to live in the world, you must follow the rules. She is the one who is forced to lose them all, to live in this world that’s so colorless and bleak that it takes and takes and takes until she’s on her knees, bleeding and begging for mercy.

There never is mercy, of course. It’s not practical to expect the world to be good to her just because she wishes it to be. She’s fated to have her heartstrings twisted until she screams and again and again she wonders why life is a burden she’s expected to bear. 

Home sometimes feels like a cage, a holding place to store all her claustrophobic anger. She’s down to only one mug by now, the sound of smashing porcelain not enough to let out the rage that bubbles from her core.  _ Why _ ? she wants to scream until her throat bleeds.  _ Why take them and leave me? How could you ask this of me? _

She stares down the future with defiance, with exhaustion.  _ Make it all stop and I’ll believe again.  _ A challenge. A bluff, really. She doesn’t know what she’d believe in. She’s not sure of anything these days.

She never stops to question why all her anger seems to be directed at a specific person, the way there is a definite address marked on all her furious rants.

She’s so pathetic these days. People used to ask her to parties and it was like being a motion picture star sometimes, the way she’d walk into a party, knowing she was the prettiest girl there and watching every man fall over himself to impress her. She’d kiss them in corners but never went home with them because she never wanted to get serious with any of them, never wanted to wake up in a man’s bed and have him look at her with no love in his eyes. But she liked the thrill of it, liked being wanted.

Girls would invite her to go shopping with them and she’d giggle with them and peruse new hats and the way a dress fit and flared in all the right places. She never had a best friend, no one she could tell or ask for help if anything was wrong, but that was fine, honestly. Part of growing up means learning to solve her own problems and not go running to her mummy every time she got lonely. 

She hasn’t gotten a party invitation in weeks. The men who used to make eyes at her at work while she poured their coffee keep their gaze fixed on their documents now. The whole world’s heard she’s a ruin these days and wisely stays away.

She’s not sure if she cares, honestly. It’s a relief to sit at home and self-destruct, falling apart every night and resurrecting herself every morning to dress and walk to work. 

The sleeping pills aren’t enough to stop the dreams and it feels like the accident has shaken loose all her memories of their games.

Peter’s sword gripped in her sweaty hands as she stands on the steps of their castle, screaming a battle cry that she’s forgotten the words to. Washing blood from underneath her fingernails as Edmund puts an arm around her shaking shoulders. 

Shafts of sunlight filtered through thick trees as they whisper _Welcome, Queen_ , their soft voices blending with the wind. The swish of her skirts as she whirls across the floor of their ballroom, her partner’s hands holding her securely and it’s almost like flying.

How is it so sharp and so clear? How can she remember the coolness of the ocean as her horse gallops through the spray? How can she be haunted by the memory of blood if she’s never even been injured?

_ Make it stop _ , she whispers in the darkness of her room after she wakes up gasping again and again.  _ I can’t miss them and this place at the same time. I’ll break. _

There’s no response, of course.

She takes another sleeping pill, rolls over, and tries not to count the hours until morning.

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for being so patient but also not letting me forget about this fic. It's been really difficult to write this since I connected so much with Susan but I'm doing my best. Susan's on a long journey and it'll take time and lots of wrong turns but she'll get there eventually. I wanted to have this up yesterday but I'm 64% sure I'm coming down with the flu so I had to finish it today while I sit on the couch huddled in blankets. Hope y'all enjoy!
> 
> Trigger warning ahead for brief thoughts of suicide.

There is no floating, no haze of grief. No unseeing eyes, no mind drifting to better times. She is caged in this body, in this moment, the feeling of pavement under her feet, a wooden desk under her straining fingers. She exists, moment by moment, eyes held open, mind forced to process every aching second.

She despises the flowers, the sunlight, the fresh breezes, the feeling of soft wool against her skin. This is  _ much  _ crueler, she thinks. A life that is nothing but pain, takes and takes and  _ takes, _ twists each nerve in scaly hands that have never heard the concept of mercy, is something that can be understood. You simply opt out.

But this? She lives a life where she retches in the bathroom after a nightmare, her knees freezing on the cold tile, eyes always too dry or swimming with tears, hands shaking too badly to lace her shoes. But then she drinks hot cocoa at night when her bones ache and finds true pleasure in the richness. She traces her fountain pen over pages and enjoys the smooth, flowing ink. She smells pies in the bakery she passes every day.

She feels possessed, the bad days turning every bright thing to ash in her hands, and nothing will fix it and nothing will heal and she feels like screaming to the sky. 

And then she’ll wake up and the rain smells good when it waters her garden and her dress floats when she turns quickly and her nail polish makes her smile with its brightness.

The cycle repeats. This life  _ isn’t  _ awful all the time and that’s so much worse.

After one ragged night after nightmares of her siblings’ bloody faces and blank faces, she flicks on a lamp and curls up on her couch with a mug of tea, still shaking. Outside, the opaque blackness presses against her window and she wraps a blanket her mother knitted around her shoulders.

So maybe this  _ is _ life. Her family will be taken and she won’t ever get to say goodbye. She’ll lose every one of their inside jokes, their games, their makebelieve stories. She’ll lose her childhood and the girl who just wanted to have fun with her siblings, playing dress up and pretending that she could be a queen.

This is not right. This is not fair and the kernel of anger continues to burn in her core. She has been robbed of all that is precious to her and she cannot get it back.

But. 

She will have lipstick and nylons and curled hair. She will have men’s gazes and girls’ envious stares and heels that click on wooden floors and earrings that cost a week’s salary. She is beautiful and she knows it, even after weeks of vomiting and shaking hands and screaming herself awake.

Her fingers tighten painfully on her cup.  _ Fine _ , she thinks fiercely. Fine, you may take all I have. But you cannot have me. You cannot have my life. I will survive and I will take this pain and lock it away so it can never hurt me again.

She decides. For her, life will be full of pleasure, of fun, of brightness. Happiness is a pipe dream but she’ll spit in the face of grief.

That night, she takes down every memory of her family she has. Lucy’s sweaters folded up in a chest, Edmund’s drawings stacked away, still in their frames, her father’s reading glasses he’d forgotten. Anything and everything she can think of gets put in boxes and set in the back of her closet. They existed. They were real. But their time is up. If she’s ever going to be able to breathe again, she has to forget about them.

She’s good at that, forgetting. Just take it all and push it down, wipe it away, and then she can be back to the regular girl who smiles and laughs and doesn’t have too many jagged edges to touch.

She sets her hair in pin curls at one am, twisting open pins with her teeth and rolling her hair just right. It takes an hour and a half and she plans while her fingers are busy and her arms ache. She wraps a silk scarf around her head when she’s finished, rubs cold cream into her dry cheeks and her hands, and then collapses into bed. For once, she doesn’t dream.

The morning feels like a slap in the face after her sleepless night but she drags herself out of bed when the sunlight hits her eyelids. She takes out her pins as quickly as possible and then brushes and brushes and brushes, shaping her hair until it falls perfectly into the curls that look effortless but take hours. She slips on stockings, her girdle, her brassiere and slides on her work skirt and shirtwaist. She adds water to her cake mascara and brushes it on her lashes, swipes on a coat of lipstick.

When she looks like the mirror, she looks almost like Susan Pevensie, the girl who could have it all: the job and the admiration and the beauty but still ruffle Edmund’s hair when he got fresh or paint Lucy’s nails because she never had the patience to do it herself.

There is no going back. The door is shut and locked. Susan Pevensie is dead, killed in a train crash, and now it’s just her. But maybe she can be  _ better _ . She can take this anger and use it to build herself back stronger, less uncertain, less broken. It’s easy to be brave when there’s nothing left to lose.

She walks out of her apartment and takes the Tube for the first time in months. The walls press in closely, heavy gray stone ready to crush her and she steps into the train and sees the seats and it’s not the same but it’s  _ so close _ and the windows only reflect the cold lines of the tunnel and the train lurches forward and she digs her nails into the seat padding until her fingers ache, stomach aching with terror.

She endured it and then stumbles out of the train at her stop on shaky legs and when she emerges into the sunlight, her hands slowly lose her tremor. A curl of pride and satisfaction bursts to life in her chest. She’s spent so long being afraid.

At work, she keeps her eyes up, greets people with a firm smile and her shoulders strong and sturdy. She sees the looks of surprise that they try to hide and she sets her jaw, resolve hardening. She will never be so broken again.

It takes a few weeks but the invitations start coming again. William, a junior lawyer, asks her to attend a charity ball that his parents are hosting and she finds herself blushing, cheeks tinting with the first pleasant emotion she’s felt in months. She accepts and goes dress shopping that week, flitting in and out of shops. They bring her hats to try on and she has fun fussing in front of mirrors and she twirls to see how a hemline floats.

Whenever she starts to remember or when the creeping ivy of her grief starts pressing tendrils against her ribs, she hacks it off and asks for the same hat but in blue, thank you, you’re such a dear.

William picks her up at her door, tells her she looks beautiful, and she smiles and nods, feeling the certainty of the world finally beginning to turn as it should. She is beautiful and men notice that and never again will she taste the acid of her nightmares in the darkest hours of the night.

The hall is full of whirling couples, the dresses blending together until the room feels like a jewel box with herself as the featured display. His parents are utterly enchanted with her when William introduces her. She says all the right words and they tease William about where he’s been hiding such a gem and how she simply must have dinner with them.

He laughs, she laughs, they laugh and then William whisks her away and they dance until she’s breathless. She swings and dips and lifts and soars and then William’s eyes are flashing and she bites her lip softly, still mindful of her lipstick. 

The hall is quiet, the music slowing, and the heat of his hand on her shoulder seeps through her dress. He leans closer, expression soft and sincere. Closer still. His lips are an inch from hers and her heart pounds in her chest, her hands shaking. There’s  _ something _ thundering against her ribs and it might be desire and it might be bone-deep terror.

He kisses her gently and she goes rigid, breath stilling in her lungs. William pulls back slowly, something like concern on his face, and her name falls from his lips.

She turns and runs off the dance floor, heels tapping as she forces her legs to move and for just a moment, she’s reaching in her dress for the knife strapped to her thigh, and then her mind stutters back to the present and she’s reached the ladies’ room and she locks herself in.

Her forehead presses against the cool tile on the wall and her breaths flinch in her chest.  _ Stupid, stupid, stupid _ . A kind man wants to take her dancing and kiss her because he thinks she’s beautiful and her terror has her hiding in the powder room. But there’s a thrumming in her veins,  _ no no no,  _ like a drum behind her eyelids.

Rage rises up, scalding and corrosive. She just wants to be  _ normal _ , to be happy and now every time she’s on the edge of a new life, this pain reaches out and drags her back as her nails leave claw marks in the dirt. She does not want to kiss William and she doesn’t know what to do with this knowledge and she hates herself for it. There’s no reason to say no. He’s a good man and he adores her and if her mother were here, she’s sure that she’d coo over him and Peter would tell him to behave himself and Edmund would be cool until he found out that William collect baseball cards and then he’d want to talk his ear off about batting averages.

Her family would allow her to have this. She knows that.

She does not want this.

A sob tears its way out of her throat. Her fingers curl into fists, her nails scarlet against her soft palms. She lets the tears roll through her, shoulders shaking, air coming in ragged little gasps.

The minutes tick by. Her toes ache in her tight shoes. She breathes and pulls back all her shattered pieces, pulling herself back into a cohesive whole. William deserves an explanation.

She lifts her chin, dabs cold water on her face until the blotchiness fades, and reapplies her lipstick from the clutch she wears around her wrist. She unlocks the door and steps out into the main room. The dance floor has mostly emptied by now, couples leaving or sitting down to have dinner. Scanning the room, she finds William standing by the bar, a glass in his hands and his tie loosened.

She runs through a checklist: chin up, shoulders back, spine stacked vertebrae on vertebrae, core pulled tight. She approaches softly but his head lifts immediately. He meets her eyes and takes a long sip of amber liquid from his glass.

“I’m sorry.”

He nods and his shoulders slump as he sighs. “Did I do something wrong? I thought you wanted this, when I asked you to come with me…”

She shakes her head immediately. “No, of course not. You know about my family—”

He nods, eyes serious.

“So you understand that I just… can’t. At least not right now. But I appreciate it; I really do. To know that someone could still want me, it meant a lot.” The words are as close to honest as she can get.

He nods again and knocks back the rest of his drink, but when he holds a hand out, it’s steady. “Let me take you home then.”

She sighs. “Thank you.”

The drive home isn’t as awful as she expected. It’s silent and there’s still a bloom of guilt in her chest but at least, there’s something like cool honesty in the air between them.

At the doorstep to her apartment, she leans forward impulsively and hugs him. “Thank you for asking me.”

He hugs her back, his arms tight but not too tight. “You’re welcome. Tell me if you ever want to go out again.”

And then he’s gone and she hears the motor start and his car disappears into the dark street. She lets herself into her apartment and leans against the closed door, a tangle of emotions pressing against her ribcage.

She puts the kettle on for tea.


End file.
